Teams with realistic championship aspirations have to be sturdy on their homecourt. The Knicks, who had the fourth-best odds set by sports gaming entities to win the title entering this season, have fortified Madison Square Garden early in the campaign.
They went into last night’s game versus the Orlando Magic undefeated at 7-0 at MSG coming off of a 133-120 win against the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday. The Knicks were 7-3 overall and will conclude their stretch of seven straight home games tomorrow versus the Miami Heat.
They will play the Heat again on Monday in South Florida, beginning a slate of five games away from the Garden where thus far the Knicks are winless. Led by point guard Jalen Brunson’s 32 points and 10 assists, and forward/center Karl-Anthony Towns’ 21 points and 13 rebounds, the Knicks, in holding off a late Grizzlies surge, set a franchise record for scoring 130 or more points in three straight games.
“Yeah, we’re clicking,” said Brunson after raising his season average to 27.7 points per game, eighth best in the league. “Most importantly, we got to finish the games better. Whenever we’re subbing on offense, there’s going to be times we’re not making shots and so we’ve got to be better defensively, no matter what. That just has to be our focus moving forward.”
Better would mean the Knicks moving closer to being top five in overall defensive rating; they were eighth (113.4) before playing the Magic and fifth in points allowed at 112.7. With a 122.6 offensive rating, the Knicks were third only behind the Denver Nuggets (123.4) and Houston Rockets (123.2). Fundamentally, an offensive rating is determined by how many points a team scores per 100 possessions.
On Tuesday before tipoff, the Knicks honored two basketball greats who recently passed away. Manhattan-born and Brooklyn-raised Lenny Wilkens, a Boys High (now Boys and Girls High) alum who coached the Knicks between 2004 and 2005, died on Sunday at the age of 88 in Medina, Washington. Wilkens is a Naismith Hall of Fame inductee as a player and coach. He was a nine-time All-Star and third on the all-time coaching wins list with 1,332.
Former Knicks first round pick Micheal Ray Richardson, who Hall of Famers Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas have said was the most challenging player they ever faced, succumbed to prostate cancer on Monday in Lawton, Oklahoma, at the age of 70. Sugar Ray, as he was known, played for the Knicks from 1978 to 1982 and the then New Jersey Nets from 1983 to 1986. At 6-5, he was one of the most talented guards to ever grace basketball courts. The four-time All-Star was banned by the NBA in 1986 for violating the league’s drug policy for the third time.